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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour coming from my rivals as they do the "pre-race" jiggle on the beginning point.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I need to start my tracker. So does the person alongside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us athletes who wear them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Brands like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an extensive selection of diverse models to cater to a spectrum of needs. Based on how feature-packed the model you select, prices can range from £100 to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to switch off."

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a restless night."

A handful of the comments I've had from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on mine? Right now, irritating. It's reporting I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the trees along my route are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these compact devices onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them only to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they boost our overall health, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a a little fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I value it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is possibly too much for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your skin which can observe capillary action, detecting your BPM. More advanced devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the future.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A professor specialising in wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."